Foss Swim School - Blaine 12440 Aberdeen Street Northeast, Blaine, MN 55449

"My son has been loving Foss. The teachers are absolutely wonderful. Unfortunately the rates just keep going up & as a single mom I can no longer afford to bring my child here. Wish it was easier on the pocket"

"We’ve had a very positive experience taking our children to Foss. The classes sizes are small, so that each child can get specialized instruction along the way. The facility itself is wonderful — lots of space for families to change, and plenty of accommodations for little ones. The instructors were fantastic at working with the children, and prepared to deal with any obstacles or fears that the kids may have when in the water. Not the cheapest swim school, but it’s absolutely high quality and worth every dollar to ensure your children have such an essential life skill mastered!"

"Great facility overall. We have really been frustrated with the inconsistent staff for kids to get comfortable with and have struggled with the evaluations feeling like they just want to keep kids repeating levels as a business plan, however this session we had Simeon work one on one with our youngest daughter who had trouble separating from us to join class. He was absolutely amazing getting her comfortable and pushing her to let go of mom and have fun. We were literally about to pull her from class and he consistently took her one on one and got her comfortable with not only letting go of us but with her class and now she loves it. Thank you Simeon you saved us from looking elsewhere for swim lessons and your kind way of encouraging kids is very appreciated!"

"This place is going downhill. We used to love the sessions and they seemed really intent on providing support for our child. Now classes have more students, meaning less swim time. Instructors are late. And worst of all they removed any ability to do makeup sessions if a student is sick. Previously they allowed one or two makeup sessions (as recently as spring 2023). Now they've cancelled that policy. And they had the gall to say it's FOR THE STUDENT'S BENEFIT. This school is not worth the premium price anymore."

"We have been coming to the Blaine FOSS since our daughter was 6 months old. Our daughter loves water and she developed some good skills at FOSS. She’s 6 years old now. Facility is nice and employees are great, what’s not so great is, the evaluation system. I understand it’s some what subjective to who’s doing the evaluation, but the general goal shouldn’t be to maximize as much revenue as they possible can, rather consider your child’s skills. It feels like the pass/repeat/fail all depends on how many kids they have registered and if they have available room or not, definitely your child’s skill set isn’t the primary factor. Exhibit A: our daughter tried out North Wolf swimming club and passed with flying colors. She just wasn’t used to the coach style learning and she was intimidated with coach's expectations and the style of communications, she wasn’t ready for that. We decided to continue with FOSS. They kept her in the same class for 3 consecutive seasons and the excuses were, she needs to work on her “breathing” or she needs to work on her hands movements! This is a girl that swam the whole Olympic size swimming pool back and forth for her try out! Later we discovered they didn’t have enough student registered for the next up session and the existing class is over capacity! Exhibit B: They placed a new student in their group, whom happens to be a girl my daughter goes to school with. She never attended swimming lesson but she ended up in the same class as our daughter! Now you have kids with highly varying degrees of skill sets in the same class and the advanced kids ended up not getting enough attention as the instructors focuses more in monitoring others and helping others with lesser experience. I don’t like singling out employee as they get the over arching theme instructions from the corner offices, but Alexander, floor manager, took it to the next level when I tried to approach her with our over all concerns! Her general responses was, “your concerns doesn’t change how we grade” paraphrased! So, this is our last session and we are taking our daughters to a different place where their developments are considered."